According to recent reports, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure emphasized the need for a greater number of euro-issued stablecoins and encouraged banks in the European Union to explore the use of tokenized deposits. This statement marks a potential shift in the French government's and its central bank's approach to digital currencies.
Lescure expressed his support for Qivalis, a consortium of 12 European banks planning to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin in the second half of 2026, aiming to challenge the dominance of US-based digital payment systems. "This is what we need, and this is what we want," Lescure stated, also urging banks to further investigate the launch of tokenized deposits.
He noted that the current volume of euro-pegged stablecoins is relatively low compared to those pegged to the US dollar, describing this situation as "unsatisfactory." Previously, the French government had taken a stricter stance on privately issued fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, with former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stating that they posed a threat to national sovereignty. More recently, the Governor of the Bank of France, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, warned that stablecoins and tokenized private money could accelerate the loss of monetary sovereignty, framing it as a significant political threat.